Internet Dot-Com Addresses Began 25 Years Ago
It's not only Julius Caesar who should take note of the Ides of March. So should every business with a dot-com address, since that was the date of the first dot-com address -- 25 years ago Monday.
On that date in 1985, a Cambridge, Mass., company named Symbolics became the first to register a dot-com domain. But the Internet at that time was still primarily a network devoted to research and academic use, and Symbolics' move didn't exactly start a land rush. By the end of the year, only five other companies had dot-com addresses, and it was nearly two years before there were a hundred.
Flash forward to 1997, just as the Internet was beginning its phenomenal rise, when one million dot-coms had been registered. Today, there are about 80 million dot-com sites.
Now with the Federal Communications Commission on the verge of declaring the broadband Internet as the main communications medium for the United States -- surpassing even telephone and broadcast TV -- dot-com sites seem to be as commonplace as street addresses.
In fact, according to news reports, these days more than 660,000 dot-coms are registered every month. Symbolics may have been the first, but today even pizza parlors have dot-com addresses.
According to a report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, dot-coms now account for about $400 billion in annual economic activity, and that will likely grow to about $950 billion in annual revenue by 2020.
And online advertising is on the verge of surpassing print-based ads this year. A survey of 1,000 advertisers by the research firm Outsell projected online ad spending this year at $120 billion, compared to about $111 billion for print-based ads in newspapers and magazines.
As the Internet continues its growth, key organizations are gearing up for the next generation. VeriSign, a...
Posted: 2010-03-16 12:59:50
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